HalfLife 2: Uprising
by CaEstigmata
Summary: This story takes place several years after the incident at the Black Mesa facility, and follows a young man named Erik, trying to survive against the oppressive Combine in City 17.
1. 01: Down the RabbitHole

The streets were empty as usual. Enforced curfew was 1800 hours, but Erik had no intention of sticking to the rules. He never did.  
  
He opened his window and stuck a small mirror out into the street, turning it from side to side. The streets were clear, but more importantly the night was dark, and the dark clouds were hinting at rain. GOOD, he thought, and hoped for a storm.  
  
He checked his jacket pockets for the fifth and final time. In his right pocket was his unbranded sidearm, the logo having worn away from nearly countless street fights. In his left pocket, a small electronic PDA, a blatant infraction of City 17's item ownership laws. He was ready, but could only hope the others were as well. He opened the door and moved out into the street.  
  
Stepping off the curb and into a puddle, Erik briskly walked down the narrow European street. He checked his back every few steps, making sure he wasn't being followed. He had never been this paranoid, but he couldn't help but feel someone, something boring its eyes into the back of his head. He came to a four-way intersection, and looked to the street signs to get his bearings. He had been "transported" more than several times in the past few weeks, and he still couldn't remember which street was where. He checked behind him one last time, and pulled out his PDA. He tapped the screen a few times, and entered his password, a futile attempt at file security. Precious seconds later, a detailed map of the city expanded on his display screen. There, just a few blocks east of here, he thought to himself, and pocketed the data organizer once again. He began his walk, this time moving at a slightly faster pace, and wrapped his hand around the sidearm in his jacket.  
  


* * *

  
A thick storm had fallen over City 17 by the time Erik stopped outside his group's annex. He stood just outside a long alleyway, between a run-down apartment complex and a recently cleaned-out warehouse. Nobody had lived or had even entered these structures for nearly a month, and the Combine patrols had become much scarcer in the area. The one good thing that's happened since the start of the rebellion. He moved to look back again but checked the motion, confident the rainstorm had sufficiently covered his travel, and walked slowly to the end of the alley.  
  
He came to a stop in front of a large and solid-looking steel dumpster. But looks can be deceiving, as the thick steel plates had been hollowed out, and the object hinged to the ground along the front edge. A perfect trap door for the annex. Erik grabbed the back and heaved the still-heavy dumpster until it swung forward to the end of a chain, bolted to the back of the dumpster and to the dead-end wall behind it. Once it was open as far as it would go, he stepped under it and fell into what could only be described as a ragged hole in the ground.  
  
He hit the floor with a quiet splash as the small slat of grey light slid closed, followed by the hollow clang of the dumpster. The loud noise would easily attract the Scanners, but he would be long gone by the time they showed up to the invisible entrance. Dim light emanated from grates lining the street curbs as Erik made his way through the sewer system. Nobody could get here through the manholes, which were consistently monitored, so he and a group of "Index-dodgers," as they called themselves, drilled the annex entrance after the nearby buildings were cleaned out. From there, anyone could make their way through the intact sewer system to an unused maintenance access way which doubled as the unofficial meeting place for Erik's group of infidels.  
  
The light got consistently dimmer as he moved to the access way until he reached a pitch-black sewer pipe. He reached into his pockets for his pocket flashlight and immediately froze. He had forgotten it in his personal quarters, along with a lighter, matches, and anything that would have helped him create useable light. A quiet sigh escaped his mouth, and he dug into his other pocket for the PDA and activated its backlight. Light glowed from the display and faintly revealed the sewer floor about two feet away. WELL, IT'S BETTER THAN A MATCH, he told himself, despite the fact it would drain his already dwindling battery life twice as fast as before. The soiled water rippled around his ankles as he walked down the sewer pipe to the access way.  
  
Erik faintly heard a radio crackle, and he froze in his tracks. It sounded like it came from the maintenance passage, and he mulled over the thoughts in his head. NONE OF US HAVE RADIOS, he began to think. And we've never used radios. But... Maybe Sabrina stole a few, so we can keep in touch? He smiled to himself. Of course. She's always been able to steal the Combine's gear from right under their noses. And how could the Combine have discovered this place so soon? Assured that his thoughts were correct, Erik walked to the end of the sewer, rounded the corner and announced his presence.  
  
"Hey Sabrina, it's --"  
  
He was face-to-mask with a Combine soldier. "HALT AND RAISE YOUR HANDS, CITIZEN!" 


	2. 02: Blackout

Thick sewage sprayed about as Erik toppled backwards, taken completely by surprise. "Holy... God... Jesus!" were the words he managed to form, while a large lump collected in his throat. His PDA slipped from his hand and shattered across the nearby wall. Modified with an impact-resistant airtight covering, only the thumb-sized memory block survived. He hoped he would remember to recover it.  
  
The Combine Metrocop, as their species sometimes identified themselves, took two steps backwards and raised its MP7 personal defense weapon. It, as gender was impossible to discern, pulled back the weapon's slider, pushing a small yet extremely deadly metal slug into the barrel. Erik lost control of his bowels. Nobody noticed.  
  
"On your feet, criminal!" came the warbling, digitalized speech from the Metrocop's translator. Still frozen with fear, Erik hesitated. Taking a single step forward, the Combine ordered again, "Citizen, obey or you will be terminated!"  
  
Realizing what was about to happen, Erik hurried to comply. He stood himself on legs that seemed curiously nonexistent, and terrified though he was, he knew he was making the best choice possible. Even if he was taken into the Index, and summarily to God-knows-where, he still had a chance to fight.  
  
The soldier grabbed Erik's shoulder and roughly turned him about, then patted him down for weapons. Finding the 9mm sidearm, the Combine ejected the full clip and slipped it into its equipment belt, and dropped the pistol to the floor. A synthesized order to "Start moving!" barked out from the Combine's translator, and Erik began to walk.  
  
He marched down the sewer. But not fast enough it seemed, as the soldier's weapon stock was jabbed sharply between Erik's shoulder blades. He let out a yelp of pain, and crumbled to his knees.  
  
"Increase your pace, criminal!" the alien ordered him, and before Erik could rise, pushed the felon's face into the sewage for good measure. In the Combine's eyes, the petty criminal deserved more punishment than he received. But any more, and the Combine would be demoted to the dishonorable position of Runner. The soldier shuddered at the memories of that rank, but the pleasure of torturing the human just a little bit more pushed those memories aside.  
  
The Combine's boot, after what seemed like an eternity, was lifted from the back of Erik's head. His lungs screaming in protest, he managed to roll himself over and let the air rush into his deflated lungs. He took a deep breath, and worked his way to a standing position, still gasping for breath. "Burn... in hell... you... BASTARD," he spat at the Combine's face.  
  
What amounted to rage began to build in the Combine's mind. The last word of the sentence had no Combine equivalent, but the first four words were not lost on the soldier. It moved to crack the MP7 down on the human, but stopped itself short. Demotion would be too much, would destroy any chance the Combine had of becoming a Metroleader, and instead chose to let the insult slide. There would be more opportunities to get revenge, and those opportunities would involve no punishment to the soldier. For now, the only thing that mattered was getting the human topside, and into the capable hands of the Indexers.  
  
Once Erik caught his breath and began again toward the lighted sewers, he heard a faint crackle of static, and knew the soldier was alerting nearby Combine, or announcing Erik's capture. Or both. His spirits plunged even deeper than before. He now had no hope of escaping now.  
  
The pair followed Erik's path from the dumpster, but in a move that half- surprised him, he was ordered along a different route. Rather than move east to the hidden entrance, the two marched down a wide but completely dark sewer, interspersed with smaller pipes that drained sewage into the passage. Erik swallowed loudly as he realized why they changed routes. Shit, we're going into the Control Zone! Past the walls that ate away at the city was an area completely controlled by the Combine. Most humans who were taken inside to the Index were, from what he had heard, shipped off- world, and those who remained were enslaved by the aliens. It can't get any worse than this, he thought to himself, and nearly vomited in fear. The soldier clicked its barrel-mounted tactical flashlight on, and a beam of light cut through the darkness.  
  
After nearly an hour of walking, what amounted to a small army of Scanners, with an additional five Combine surrounding Erik and his captor, had collected nearby. Quietly buzzing through the adjacent sewers, the Scanners were, true to their name, constantly scanning for the presence of life forms. It was hardly worth the fuel to check for humans, but the Scanners were here to scan for other life forms. As of yet, Erik had never seen any creatures other than the Combine soldiers, but he had heard... stories... of them. Horrible stories that made him truly afraid of them. Headcrabs, bullsquids, controllers,hydras... The list went on, and for each new story he heard, he had become more paranoid, always checking the shadows for anything. His eyes darted left and right, continually searching for movement in the drainpipes.  
  
The lead soldier's radio hissed with static, its sound-insulator broken, and words of a vaguely-human but alien tongue reverberated off the cold steel walls. Once the transmission ended, the leader flashed a set of hand signals, and the soldiers immediately stopped. And waited.  
  
Erik opened his mouth to speak, but a voice stopped him short. "No talking," was the Combine's order. And they continued to wait.  
  
And wait.  
  
The soldier to the left, of which only the glowing red eyes were visible, seemed to look at Erik longer than any of the others. That's odd, he thought, and something began nagging at the back of his mind. It was something about a Combine soldier, but he couldn't put his finger on it... As he racked his memory, he looked straight at the soldier. It stared right back, and Erik noticed something different about it. But before he could figure it out, he heard the sound of metal scraping metal, and a dim column of starlight shot down just ahead of the group.  
  
The beam of light was cut to pieces as a Combine soldier stepped into the manhole and descended down the ladder. A second figure, likely another captured human, followed it down the ladder. A second Combine followed the prisoner, and pulled the manhole cover back, cutting off the only natural light in the passage.  
  
It was then that Erik realized there was not only something different about the soldier on his left, there was something different about the sewer. Something had changed since they had stopped. He looked around, and heard nothing but the static hiss of closed-circuit radios. Nothing, he thought...The Scanners are gone!  
  
At that moment, the soldier off to the left deactivated its tac-light, and splashes of running feet sounded in the smaller connecting sewers. They were getting closer. The Combine on the left clicked its weapon's safety off. Erik thought he heard a muffled laugh.  
  
The splashing got closer, until several muscular, avian-legged life forms moved into the main sewer. One put its hands together, and a large ball of what looked like electricity formed between them. The Combine soldiers' armor and equipment began to rattle, and seemed to be attracted to the ball of electric charge. The life form's hands moved apart to accommodate the growing charge, and then clapped. Blue threads of electrons shot out in all directions. All of the tac-lights immediately flashed off. The faint hiss of the Metrocops' radios disappeared, as did the dim glow of red eyes.  
  
Suddenly, small bolts of lightning flew from the other aliens' locations. Some shot wide, hitting the damp steel walls and firing sparks in all directions. Other bolts managed to find their targets in the darkness, burning holes through all but one Combine soldier as their weapons fired blindly, strobing the sewer with light. While collecting a charge, one of the new life forms managed to absorb several 9mm slugs, until an either skillfully-placed or very lucky shot obliterated the front of its skull. It toppled forwards, and with the very last of its energy attempted to stop its fall with its hands. The charge that had collected had somehow remained between the alien's hands, and the instant it reached the liquid waste covering the floor, Erik's vision went black. 


	3. 03: Relative Safety

A knife of pain slashed through Erik's chest, and his heart began to beat. His senses faded into existence, blurry and dulled from a lack of oxygen.  
  
He groggily opened his eyes, and was greeted with a wash of bright light and a burning of his retinas. Quickly closing his eyelids, he tried to yell out in pain, and choked on the sewage still in his lungs. His strength returning, he managed to sit up and vomit on his already tattered trench coat and pants. He coughed and spit the remainder of the vomit onto the floor, and realized where he was. Or tried to. He knew he was out of the sewers. But that doesn't narrow it down much. He half-grinned, gagged, and coughed up the last of the sewage lodged in his system.  
  
A thick steel door creaked open just ahead of Erik, and he opened and squinted his eyes to look. A dark figure walked into the slightly cramped room, a stark contrast to the white of the walls. It was a Combine soldier. Erik rolled off the raised surface he had been laying on, and landed flat on his back. Unable to manage an escape, Erik could only look up in fear, and hope his death would be quick and painless. He trembled, and shut his eyes tight.  
  
"You're Erik, aren't you?" the soldier questioned. Erik nodded furiously, hoping to extend his life, even for only a minute.  
  
"That was quite a fight down there. I'm surprised you're even alive." Erik slowly opened his eyes, and looked up at the Combine. Only, it wasn't a Combine.  
  
"Wh- Who are you?" Erik wondered aloud.  
  
"The name's Barney. Barney Calhoun." He extended a black-clad hand. "Let me help you up."  
  
Erik weakly latched onto the armored hand, and was easily heaved up to his feet. "Barney Calhoun?" he replied. "I... think I've heard that name before." He looked around the room, and surmised that he was in a refurnished hospital room. The windows were boarded up, to ensure whoever stays goes undetected by the Scanners' cameras. That was crucial, especially after leaving the site of five murdered Combine cops. The entire population would be alerted to the crime, and anyone who wasn't exactly where they were supposed to be would be shot or deported. Nobody knew for sure which the worse fate was, and nobody wanted to find out.  
  
Barney left the room, but continued to talk. "Did you read the papers just before the invasion?" Two chairs scraped across the floor of the hallway.  
  
"A few," Erik said. "But that was, what, fourteen months ago? I can't remember nearly anything." His eyes finally adjusted to the light, and he noticed that the walls were not white but yellow with grime, and the single sixty-Watt bulb was flickering. Hospital beds and IV trees were strewn across the room. All the electronic medical equipment had been confiscated by the Combine in the first month of the invasion. The floor was covered with dust, dirt and plaster, and a cockroach scuttled through the open door. A loud crunch came from the hall, and he heard Barney mutter, "Damn roaches, wish the Combine were that easy...", more scraping, and "Get some good food, this guy looks like he hasn't eaten in days."  
  
Barney came back into the room, dragging the chairs up to Erik. "Take a seat, Erik," and he seated himself in the other chair. Erik obliged, and relaxed as he sank into the torn padding.  
  
"So," Barney continued, "You can't remember anything about me." Erik nodded. "Okay." Barney grinned in mock anticipation. "Does the name 'Gordon Freeman' ring any bells?"  
  
Immediately, Erik's eyes were wide open, and he sat straight up. "Yeah!" he exclaimed. "I know him. He led the initial rebellion force, and most of the attacks. He's one of the most important people we have!"  
  
"You mean 'had'." Barney's mood darkened. "I didn't expect you to know about this, not with the rebellion in its current state. See, a few weeks back, Gordon disappeared."  
  
"What do you mean, disappeared?!" Erik exclaimed.  
  
"Disappeared. Gone. He went out on an intelligence mission with a group of our fighters. From what I've been able to gather from them, he successfully made his way into the Control Zone. A large battle erupted inside the Combine walls, and the team decided to camp out in an abandoned apartment and wait for Gordon to return. They must have stayed nearly a week, but he never came back over those walls."  
  
Erik was stunned. "But... Is, is that all you know?" His fists clenched, turning his knuckles to a pasty white.  
  
"I'm afraid so." Barney paused for a moment. "You were somewhat close to Gordon, weren't you?"  
  
"Yeah," he replied solemnly. "Not that sort of close, but we were pretty good buddies."  
  
"I thought so." He took a deep breath. "That's why we saved you."  
  
Erik's eyes widened. "So that's why I'm alive right now? Because I knew Gordon?!" He suppressed his anger, and sighed. "We've got to find him. He's about the only chance we've got of surviving much longer. The best fighter we've got."  
  
Barney looked incredulous, and stood up. "There's more to it than that, much more." He began to pace across the room. "He's not just a fighter. He's a scientist from the Black Mesa lab, in what used to be the United States. You've heard of Black Mesa, right? I mean, how couldn't you?"  
  
Erik shook his head, silently afraid of what Barney might have to say.  
  
"Black Mesa was --"  
  
Barney was cut off by a faint rumble.  
  
"What's wrong?" Erik asked. "What is it?"  
  
"Shh!" Barney said, and he stepped up to the boarded-up window, peeking through the cracks. Erik followed, but didn't know where to look.  
  
"There," Barney told him, "Straight down the street. I can't make it out too well. Does that look like a Gunship to you?"  
  
"Hell no, that's a Strider!" Erik gasped. "We've got to get out of here!" He turned and ran, but Barney grabbed him by the shoulder and stopped him.  
  
"Look, we don't know if we've been spotted. If we run, we'll have to leave most of our weapons here, and then the Combine are going to be at full alert if they find the weapons. We've got to be absolutely sure that the Combine knows we're here."  
  
At that moment, another resistance fighter ran into the room. "Barney, bad news, this place is flooding with Scanners!" She tossed two unlabeled cans of food to Erik. "You, go with Barney and grab an MP7. We need to get out of here, quick!" 


End file.
